The Record 2014 - 2015

real problem for the government was getting the maintained sector firing properly so that every child in the country has the opportunity to perform to the best of his or her ability. “We want your DNA”, he said; “what that means is that we want your intellectual property” – “we want your schemes of work and your academic plans”. Right there and then in the room I understood what was – at least in part – wrong. It’s not our intellectual property that sets us apart as an independent school, nor is it even the excellent value-added scores in our academic results; these things are important and impressive and real; but they are only a fraction of the story. It is the value we add to the academic programme by the rich, diverse and vibrant co-curricular programme – something set solidly into this boarding community in Oxford – and most important of all, it is the addition of ethical values in all that we do. Even if we just look at knowledge, which these days is so instantaneously accessible to everyone at the click of a mouse, this is useless unless we have the cognitive skills to interpret it and the emotional intelligence to use it. We have been working hard in this area – not just in the IB Sixth, with its core component of Theory of Knowledge, but much more broadly – to assist our pupils in understanding the nature of their own knowledge and their own processes for learning. In Howard Gardner’s book Five Minds for the Future – a prophetic look forward to the types of thinking our pupils need to develop

in order for them to cope successfully with the world that they will live in – he says that we need to foster in our pupils: …the kinds of minds that are particularly at a premium in the world of today and will be even more so tomorrow. They span both the cognitive spectrum and the human spectrum—in that sense they are comprehensive, global. So, I would return to today and all that has gone so well to get us here and in such good order. And by today I mean both Gaudy as the end of the academic year, and also Gaudy as the final day of Gaudy Week. For Gaudy Week is a microcosm of the school year; in the past seven days or so we have lived through all of the joys and pressures of the past twelve months – and what a great triumph this has been. Indeed I am ever grateful to Alex Tester (and those many others helping him) who have made this week’s astonishing confection of Music, Drama, Art, Dance, Science, Cricket and Rowing – and so much more – the most spectacular ever. And I am also hugely grateful for Mrs van der Heiden’s wonderfully creative Gaudy Programme. Finally, of course, I am immensely proud of what our pupils have done this week. So, as I have enjoyed the great variety of all that is best at Teddies, I have re-lived the whole year again. I have watched the 1st XI cricketers winning the John Harvey Cup for the third year in a row by crafting a great

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